Lord Sentamu: My Lords, I declare an interest as a former president of Makerere University Students Association. Together with the then president of Makerere  University Students’ Guild, Olara Otunnu, we opposed President Idi Amin Dada’s decree of 4 August 1972 to expel within 90 days Asians who were Ugandan citizens and pleaded with him to observe international law and obligations regarding Asian citizens of other nations.
I am grateful to Thomas Brown of the House of Lords Library for his article Ugandan Asians: 50 Years Since Their Expulsion from Uganda. He writes that
“Ugandan President Idi Amin, who had seized power in a military coup the previous year, ordered the expulsion”
reportedly following
“a dream in which he had been instructed by God to expel them”,
because they had been
“‘sabotaging Uganda’s economy, deliberately retarding economic progress, fostering widespread corruption and treacherously refraining from integrating in the Ugandan way of life’”.
He continues:
“Estimates of the number of Ugandan Asians subject to Amin’s announcement vary, ranging from 55,000 to up to 80,000. However, sources such as the Economist, in a recent article marking the anniversary, have put the number of people of Asian descent in Uganda subject to Amin’s decision at around 76,000 … The variation in cited population figures appears to stem in part from an exemption announced shortly after Amin’s original announcement for those Ugandan Asians holding Ugandan citizenship, although many of these people were later compelled to leave the country and rendered stateless in the process … Of the estimated total, around half are thought to have held British passports with another 9,000 holding Indian or Pakistani nationality and the remainder either holding or having applied for Ugandan citizenship.”
Any country that renders its citizens stateless by compelling them to leave commits a heinous crime and violates the rule of law, and it breaches international obligations when it expels citizens of other nations from the country of their birth. I am deeply sorry that our opposition and plea to President Idi Amin were not heeded in the end.
Olara Otunnu and I were conscripted to accompany Idi Amin on his trip to Somalia to negotiate a trade and education deal with Siad Barre, the President of that country. Aboard the presidential jet, we reminded Idi Amin that when Uganda became independent on 9 October 1962 it incorporated the common law, statutes and case law of the United Kingdom into Ugandan law, including chapters 39 and 40 of the Magna Carta of 1215:
“No … man shall be seized or imprisoned or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land … To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”
This is a recent translation from the Latin in Tom Bingham’s The Rule of Law. We continued our plea that the Republic of Uganda must comply with its international obligations in respect of Asian citizens of other nations.
Sadly, President Idi Amin never observed the rule of law. He saw himself as its embodiment and turned Uganda—“the Pearl of Africa”, as described by Winston Churchill—into a predatory state. Neighbourly love and the golden rule,
“in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you”,
became, “Do it to others before they do it to you.”
The expulsion of all Asians from Uganda was not only inhuman, brutal and racist; it broke the rule of law and international obligations. I salute all Asians expelled from Uganda. As president of Christian Aid, I am thankful for the block grant of £100,000 it gave every year to the reception centres in Birmingham and Leicester, and to the resettlement programme, and for the sterling co-ordinating work by Jack Arthey, Dennis Massey, Tony Jones, Alan Brash and Alan Booth.
May the United Kingdom continue to observe the rule of law and international obligations to the stranger in our midst. May we all do to them in many ways what we would have them do to us. I salute this country, which gave me refuge. Let us all take note of this debate.